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1 WHAT DRIVES PEOPLE to BEHAVE the WAY THEY DO? Life 1 WHAT DRIVES PEOPLE TO BEHAVE THE WAY THEY DO? Life is pain...anyone who says differently is selling something. The Princess Bride There is something very basic and important missing from introductory psychology textbooks -- an explanation of what it means to be human, and what it is that human beings want out of life. In my view, these are the questions with which an intro psych class should begin. The best answers I have found for these questions are provided by Ernest Becker, in his book, The Birth and Death of Meaning. I put this reading together as a summary of what Becker had to say in this book. The first few lectures will also provide an overview of these ideas. My hope is that this presentation of Becker’s ideas will help you to better understand yourself and the people in your life. I am also hopeful that these ideas will provide an organizing framework that will help you understand the different subfields of psychology that we, and the textbook, will cover over the course of the semester. The Birth and Death of Meaning was originally written in 1962 and then revised in 1971. In it, Becker addressed the questions of what it is to be a human and why it is that people behave the way they do. Becker felt that one could not answer these questions in the context of any one discipline and therefore tried to gather all the basic insights from the social sciences (e.g., philosophy, psychology, anthropology, biology, sociology, etc.). Becker’s analysis ultimately addresses two important sets of psychological questions: 1. Why do we need self-esteem, where do we get it, and how does it affect social behavior? 2. What psychological functions do cultures serve, why is prejudice is so pervasive, and how do cultures influence mental health? THE NATURE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE Becker began by noting a disparity in the way the social sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology) and the natural sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry) are viewed -- social science is seen as soft, and not “real” science, while the natural sciences are accepted as absolute truth. Becker pointed out that people view the natural sciences positively because the fruits of their investigations make us feel powerful: they enable us to take control of our environment, cure and control diseases, build better cars, better cellular phones, more potent weapons, etc, and that feels good. There are usually clear, useful, and profitable applications of knowledge gained from the natural sciences. 2 In contrast, by studying ourselves, the social sciences often make us feel exposed and reveal things about ourselves, our fears, our flaws and limitations that we perhaps don’t want to know. In addition, because of political, moral, and practical issues, its not always clear what we should do with the knowledge gained about ourselves. If we figure out how to bring kids up to be decent adults, it would be morally dubious to have the government tightly control child- rearing, so how would we ethically get parents to do the right things to make this happen? And who is going to foot the bill if we as a society do try to make this happen? For example, the state of Mississippi (in the U.S.) recently decided that it was going to use money from hardworking citizens—tax dollars—to fund a state wide program to teach men how to be better fathers! Many people were appalled at this decision. Yet social science evidence is pretty clear that even moderate success in such a task would substantially reduce child abuse, crime, and poverty. Consider another example. If we figure out that violence in movies and TV contributes to violence in society, should we get rid of it? Then what would people watch? And doesn’t censorship threaten freedom? And how would we stop the people who are making all that money on violence? And if we greatly reduced violent tendencies in people, who would serve in the military? And who would play center for the Edmonton Oilers? Despite the image problems of the social sciences and complexities that often accompany applying social science knowledge, Becker argued that some of the most important insights humans have stumbled upon have come from the social sciences. The key insight Becker focused on is: humans are largely driven by fears toward the pursuit of meaning, significance, and trying to make their mark on the world. The way my colleagues and I have put it, people need to think of themselves as more significant than apes, lizards, and lima beans. But are we really? Or are we just talking sausages, cold-cuts with an attitude, spam with a plan? HOW ARE HUMANS SIMILAR TO AND DIFFERENT FROM OTHER ANIMALS? Becker started his analysis by noting that any scientific study of people should begin with the observation that humans constitute a species of animals. Although this is an obvious point, people often behave as if it were untrue. As one small example, if you take a close look at the doors to most of the buildings on campus, including the Psychology or Zoology wing of the biological sciences building, you will find a warning that except for seeing-eye dogs, animals are not allowed in these buildings. Just the legitimate excuse some of you have been looking for—a legitimate excuse for not attending class! As we will see, Becker’s analysis will suggest that this is not simply a semantic error, but rather a small example of how we humans try to deny our animality. Still, the biologists insist we are in fact animals, and as such, humans share many things with other animals, including an evolutionary heritage that began with the very first life form. In fact, as a disciple of Sigmund Freud who greatly influenced Becker, Otto Rank, emphasized that all humans (including you) share a common ancestor-- a great (to the nth power) grandparent not only with all other humans, but with all living creatures as well. Rank argued that the minimal, 3 most basic thing that we have all inherited from that first life form is a life-force -- a will to survive and prosper which motivates our actions. As animals, we need certain essentials to survive, such as food, water, etc. We also probably share with many other animals a desire to have pleasurable experiences and avoid painful ones. Of course, each species has been shaped by evolutionary processes to have unique attributes. So to understand how human beings have evolved to be the unique creatures we are, we have to take a short digression to review Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Brief Overview of Evolutionary Theory The key ingredient in the recipe for evolution is variability in behavior because of genetic influence. There are two sources of such variability: 1) sex: when a new creature is produced, it does not have the exact same genetic make-up as those who produced it, but has a combination of its parents’ genes; and 2) mutation: random mistakes in DNA replication. The idea of evolution through natural selection is that genes, which are passed along to subsequent generations through reproduction, influence each individual organism’s nature and attributes. Those creatures that possess attributes facilitating their survival and reproduction most successfully pass along their genes, which in turn, leads to the widespread representation of those attributes in future generations. This is what is meant by “survival of the fittest”. Attributes that facilitate survival and lead to reproductive success become prominent within a group of animals; because these attributes are well-adapted for the environment in which the species lives, they are called adaptations. For example, giraffes may have started out as plant-eating mammals (herbivores) that possessed necks with varying lengths. However, at some point, vegetation in the environment in which these animals lived may have become scarce, thus conferring a survival advantage to animals with longer necks because they could get to more food. Because they could get to more food, the animals with longer necks would live longer, reproduce more, and pass along more of the “long neck” genes until the shorter necked creatures died out-- resulting in the long-necked species we know as a giraffe. Of course, what is adaptive at any moment in time is a complex issue, depending on the particular environment and all of the existing attributes of the inhabitants of that environment. Why didn’t giraffe necks get even longer than they are? Presumably because after a certain length the strain on the physical design of the animal became too great so that super-long necked giraffes died out because they couldn’t properly support their necks or move well enough to evade predators or be successful in the mating game. Which brings us to another point: adaptations are not just attributes that help organisms survive but also ones that help organisms procreate, thereby perpetuating their genes into the future. In fact, sometimes an adaptation serves to enhance procreative potential while hindering chances for a long life expectancy. For example, male peacocks possess elaborate plumage that practically advertises “eat me” to predators, but this same plumage also serves to attract potential mates sufficiently to make it an effective adaptation. Drawbacks of Evolutionary Thinking in Psychology 4 Evolutionary thinking has become very popular in psychology, and you will read many evolutionary explanations of human behaviors and attributes in psychology textbooks. However, you should remain skeptical of evolutionary explanations because they always come after the fact. Evolutionary psychology has yet to come up with a truly novel prediction that has been well-supported by research, and that is a key test of the value of a theory.
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